Smoking-Induced Gene Expression Changes in the Bronchial Airway Are Reflected in Nasal and Buccal Epithelium
Date
2008-5-30
Authors
Sridhar, Sriram
Schembri, Frank
Zeskind, Julie
Shah, Vishal
Gustafson, Adam M.
Steiling, Katrina
Liu, Gang
Dumas, Yves-Martine
Zhang, Xiaohui
Brody, Jerome S.
Version
OA Version
Citation
Sridhar, Sriram, Frank Schembri, Julie Zeskind, Vishal Shah, Adam M Gustafson, Katrina Steiling, Gang Liu, Yves-Martine Dumas, Xiaohui Zhang, Jerome S Brody, Marc E Lenburg, Avrum Spira. "Smoking-induced gene expression changes in the bronchial airway are reflected in nasal and buccal epithelium." BMC Genomics 9:259. (2008)
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and a significant cause of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Prior studies have demonstrated that smoking creates a field of molecular injury throughout the airway epithelium exposed to cigarette smoke. We have previously characterized gene expression in the bronchial epithelium of never smokers and identified the gene expression changes that occur in the mainstem bronchus in response to smoking. In this study, we explored relationships in whole-genome gene expression between extrathorcic (buccal and nasal) and intrathoracic (bronchial) epithelium in healthy current and never smokers. RESULTS: Using genes that have been previously defined as being expressed in the bronchial airway of never smokers (the "normal airway transcriptome"), we found that bronchial and nasal epithelium from non-smokers were most similar in gene expression whencompared to other epithelial and nonepithelial tissues, with several antioxidant, detoxification, and structural genes being highly expressed in both the bronchus and nose. Principle component analysis of previously defined smoking-induced genes from the bronchus suggested that smoking had a similar effect on gene expression in nasal epithelium. Gene set enrichment analysis demonstrated that this set of genes was also highly enriched among the genes most altered by smoking in both nasal and buccal epithelial samples. The expression of several detoxification genes was commonly altered by smoking in all three respiratory epithelial tissues, suggesting a common airway-wide response to tobacco exposure. CONCLUSION: Our findings support a relationship between gene expression in extra- and intrathoracic airway epithelial cells and extend the concept of a smoking-induced field of injury to epithelial cells that line the mouth and nose. This relationship could potentially be utilized to develop a non-invasive biomarker for tobacco exposure as well as a non-invasive screening or diagnostic tool providing information about individual susceptibility to smoking-induced lung diseases.
Description
License
Copyright 2008 Sridhar et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.